VMware President Eschenbach bolts to become a VC

VMware’s President and COO Carl Eschenbach is leaving the company to pursue a career in venture capital, marking a second high-ranking executive to leave VMware in as many weeks for the startup funding world.

Since 2002 Eschenbach has held various sales positions at VMware and became president in 2012, overseeing the company’s $6 billion sales, channel, and marketing strategy. In recent years Eschenbach has become a public face of VMware, headlining VMWorld keynotes along with CEO Pat Gelsinger; he’s generally been recently viewed as the number two executive at the company behind Gelsinger.

His departure comes amid a broader shakeup at VMware. The company’s parent firm, EMC, is being bought by Dell. In an interview last week Gelsinger played down the impact the merger would have on VMware’s operations. But Eschenbach’s departure comes just a week after VMware’s Senior Vice President and General Manager for Networking and Security Martin Casado announced that he would be leaving the company to pursue a career at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Eschenbach and Casado will remain advisers to VMware. The company announced that Maurizo Carli, who has been with the firm since 2008, has been promoted to executive vice president of worldwide sales; CTO Ray O’Farrell has added executive vice president to his title and Executive Vice President Sanjay Poonen, who heads up the company’s end-user computing division, will now lead its worldwide marketing and communications teams.

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